Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery)

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  Rifling through her belongings was more difficult than I thought it would be. I hadn’t known her well, but she’d been the first dancer to let me into the group. I pushed away my sadness at her death and plowed ahead.

  If Jennifer kept a journal or diary, it wasn’t in the nightstand. There was an array of creams tucked into the drawer, along with sleeping pills and a bottle of pain reliever. A box of tissue discreetly hidden in a Victorian tissue holder and a wireless handset telephone sat on top of the nightstand.

  I threw back the bedspread, searching for what, I didn’t know. The police had come and gone, and Bennett had given Manny permission to search, but I couldn’t imagine they’d left anything for us to find.

  Dropping to my knees, I searched under the bed. There was a long, flat plastic box. It had already been rifled through, most likely by the police, but I pulled it out anyway. I froze at the familiar colors of the Sacramento Royals.

  I moved the blouses aside and pulled out the first team jersey. Number 63, Rogers. After laying it next to me, I took out the next one. Number 11, Christof. There were five in all, two current players and three I recognized as players who’d been traded from the last two seasons.

  “Manny, ven aquí,” I called.

  He ambled into the bedroom, all of four long strides, and stood beside me as I pointed to the jerseys. “Trophies,” he said without even pausing.

  I stared at him. He was right. That had to be it, but the idea floored me. Jennifer didn’t strike me as the type to sleep around. I’d never seen her fawning over the players. Y también, she’d been the first one to tell me to stay away from them. Why? To protect her own territory? And who was the “civilian”? If she was into collecting the jerseys from the players she’d had flings with, the civilian boyfriend puzzle piece didn’t fit.

  He moved to the other side of the bed and I went to the tiny closet. I slid one of the doors over and pushed away another negligee, a black turtleneck sweater folded over a hanger, a pair of gray slacks (size four), and a red knit dress. A few pairs of shoes, each name brand, were lined up on the floor, but all in all, this wasn’t much of a wardrobe and not how any normal person lived.

  I moved the doors to the opposite side, pulling out photo albums and shoe boxes. I didn’t know what the cops had been searching for, but they seemed to have left a lot of stuff untouched. I tackled the albums first. The top book held pictures of the Courtside Dancers.

  The next book was the most interesting. Photos of the players whose jerseys she’d collected. There were none of her, but plenty of the men, each lazily sprawled on her Victorian bed, sheets rumpled, undressed, lounging as much as a six-foot-five giant could lounge.

  “Risky to bring pictures like this to get professionally developed,” I said to Manny.

  “No risk if you develop them yourself,” he said from his crouched position on the other side of the bed. He had a smaller plastic box open and lifted out a compact photo printer and digital camera.

  “So she only used it for this,” I said, my hand on the second album.

  Was her current fling one of the current players whose jerseys she had? I closed the albums and went on to the boxes.

  The first several held shoes that had barely been worn. The next one held trinkets, presumably gifts from her lovers. There was a diamond-encrusted basketball pin, a player’s bobblehead, a velvet rose, a gaudy gold jewelry box, a ceramic pillbox, a silver flask with a jersey number engraved on the front, and a slew of other tasteless items.

  The last box was bigger, and I knew the second I opened it that it held the goods from Jennifer’s most recent conquest. The jersey was on the bottom, neatly folded, pictures piled on top. I gathered them up and examined them one by one. She had been seeing Number 51. Rick Javorski. In my hands I held pictures of the same staged poses she’d taken of her other lovers.

  It was when I came to a repeated pose, the player lounging on Jennifer’s bed, that I realized these were photo sets of two different men. I looked more closely at the second man. Number 23, I think. Lance Connick. The thicker, slower player that Cassie had pointed out as hot.

  Two at once? Jennifer got around. What was in it for her? She kept the photos and jerseys hidden. What she’d done was against the rules. She would have been kicked off the dance team if it had become known.

  “Why would she do this?” I mused.

  Manny didn’t answer. He was rifling through the dresser drawers. Once again, it was clear that Jennifer was not a clothes horse.

  “Es muy extraño,” I muttered.

  “¿Qué? What’s strange, poderosa?” Manny asked.

  I darted a wary glance at him. He hadn’t called me one of his nicknames in a while, and I was relieved to hear it leave his lips. It meant he hadn’t lost confidence in me, right? Because he wouldn’t call me “strong” unless he believed it.

  “She has hardly any clothes,” I said. I moved so he could see in the lingerie drawer I’d gone through. “There are practically no underwear or bras,” I added, in case he didn’t get the significance of what I was saying.

  He arched one eyebrow, like he thought women were an utter mystery. “And she should.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “I’d think so.”

  For a brief second, his eyes smoldered, almost like he wanted to ask, “Do you?” but then it was gone. Manny was an enigma, and one I preferred to keep at arm’s length, gracias a Dios.

  “So why didn’t she?” he asked as I moved on to the next drawer. It held papers and pamphlets. I grabbed a handful and spread them out on the dresser.

  Manny and I stared at the resort brochures, at each other, then back to the stack. “Huh.” There wasn’t a whole lot more to say.

  Suddenly Jennifer’s lack of clothing made sense.

  “She was a nudist,” I said, in case Manny didn’t see the naked bodies on the glossy paper. “Ranking where she wanted to join?” I pondered aloud, thinking about the numbers jotted in the upper right corners. Two were marked by #1, one had #2, and one had #3.

  The dent in his square chin was pronounced as he jutted his jaw out. “Muy interesante,” he said in his low, gravelly voice.

  Indeed.

  I tucked the stack into my purse, and after another twenty minutes and nothing more to discover, Manny and I headed our separate ways.

  Chapter Twelve

  I worked the lunch shift at Abuelita’s, waiting tables on autopilot. As Sylvia and I walked around each other, serving warm chips and salsa, carrying steaming plates, and refilling drinks, my mind stayed on Jennifer Wallace. I couldn’t get her love life—or her way of life—off my mind. How many of the girls broke the rules?

  “Mija.” My grandfather crooked his finger at me, motioning me over to his table.

  “¿Qué, Abuelo?”

  “¿Dónde está Antonio?”

  I scanned the dining room. Wasn’t Antonio here? I shrugged. “¿No está aquí? No sé.” Sylvia slowed as she walked behind me and I turned to her. “Antonio’s not here?” I asked.

  She raised her brows. “I don’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her. Damn. My job was making me cynical.

  I put a hand on my hip and eyed her. “Sylvia?”

  She threw up her hands, palms facing me. “I don’t know anything. You have to talk to him.”

  Turning back to Abuelo, I shrugged. “There you go. We know nothing.”

  The rest of my shift passed without incident, and without Jack stopping by. Which made me wonder if he was more put out by my display at the game than he was letting on. Or maybe my not telling him had really crossed a line.

  I chose to deal with that little worry by eating. I tossed my apron into the laundry bin in the kitchen and smiled at my father. “Papi, would you make me a taco salad, por favor?”

  My father didn’t understand my driving need to be a detective, but he’d never deny me food. He tossed beans, rice, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa into a fried
flour tortilla shell and slid it across the warming shelf. I perched on a stool behind the cooking line, forking the salsa-vinaigrette-covered lettuce leaves into my mouth. Halfway through the massive salad, my cell phone rang.

  Having learned from past mistakes, I read the LCD readout before answering this time, but it wasn’t a number I recognized. “Hello?”

  “Lola? It’s Selma. From the Royals?”

  I started to greet her, but she cut me off, her tone urgent and scared. “I need to talk to you. Can you meet me?”

  My spine instantly stiffened, and zip, just like that, my appetite was gone. “Sure. When?”

  “It’s kind of…urgent. Can you come now?” She rattled off the name of a restaurant, then click, she was gone.

  Urgent. As in something to do with the case. It was the only thing that made sense. If only I could beam myself over there, maybe I’d finally be able to move forward with solving it.

  I dumped the rest of my salad in the trash, tossed the plate in the industrial sink, and flew up the steps two at a time to the break room upstairs, then hurried back down with my purse.

  “Hasta luego, Papi,” I called, waving to my father as I barreled through the kitchen door and into the back parking lot.

  On the way, my mind ran through the possible reasons Selma would want to meet with me. She’d received a letter. She had a theory. Or, if I was really lucky, she knew something about Jennifer’s death.

  …

  In ten minutes flat, I was at an eatery on the edge of downtown and midtown Sacramento. Toby’s was a mom-and-pop restaurant and Selma stood out like a defiant bull in a china shop, daring the customers to recognize her and disturb her meal. I’d met her that first day when she’d come to Camacho & Associates with Jennifer, and I’d seen her at practices and the two games I’d danced at, but this was our first one-on-one meeting.

  Out of her dance outfits, she was still über sexy in her thin, gauzy skirt and the plunging neckline of her red halter top. She was striking in a nontraditional way, with shiny cinnamon-colored hair and golden skin. Tanning salon—that had to be it. What surprised me most was how young she was. Without the heavy makeup, I realized that she couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen.

  “Hey,” she said when I sat down opposite her. Her eyes flittered about, repeatedly searching every area of the room. I had my back turned to the parking lot, angling myself to face her. I took out my notebook, glad that I didn’t have to hide from her the fact that I was a detective.

  “What’s up?” Cut to the chase. I was tired of having nothing to show for my investigation.

  “I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t really know any of the other girls.” Her voice had a deep tenor to it and I had to lean in a bit to hear her over the clacking stoneware, clinking glasses, and roar of chatter in the dining room. I moved the silver-capped salt and pepper shakers out of my way, pushing them next to the artificial flower poking out of a thick bottled vase.

  “You haven’t made any friends?”

  “A couple, but no one to just go hang out with, you know? They’re mostly veterans with the team, so they’re all tight. I don’t really fit in.”

  I forgot about my notebook and just concentrated on her. “What about the other newer girls?”

  She shrugged her naked shoulders and abruptly changed the subject. “Your boss is intense.”

  I wanted to say, “So are you.” Instead I said, “Yeah. But a very good detective. The best.”

  She scanned the room again, then settled her gaze back on me. “Maybe.”

  “Selma, are you okay?”

  Her expression faltered. “Not quite,” she said, her voice low.

  A silence hung in the air between us. The pointed peaks of her upper lip and the slight flair of her nostrils at the end of her straight nose gave away the nerves zinging inside her. She brushed a wing of hair from her face.

  “Do you wanna talk about it?” Since you called me here, I added to myself.

  She arched a brow and seemed to study the people in the room. “My real name is Selma Winchester, not Selma Mann,” she said, but stopped as the waitress came to our table. Selma quickly picked up her menu, her painted blue fingernails popping out against the red of her halter.

  “Ready to order?” The waitress leaned her weight on one leg and tapped her foot.

  I’d hadn’t regained my appetite, so I was good on the food front. “Just coffee for me,” I said.

  The waitress frowned, then sent a hopeful look to Selma.

  “The veggie omelet.” Selma folded the menu and handed it to the waitress. Her hands trembled as she took a sip of her water. She could say she was fine all she wanted, but it was clear she was freaked out.

  “Sourdough, wheat, or white?”

  “White, please,” she said into her glass.

  The waitress stomped away, her white orthopedic shoes gleaming against the dark carpet. I made a mental note to leave her a killer tip for bogarting the table without ordering. We waitresses—even the part-time ones—had to stick together.

  “I’ve been coming to this place since I moved to Sacramento,” Selma said. “Maybe too much.”

  So we were going to go slowly and Selma would set the pace of the conversation. Good to know.

  As our coffee was delivered, I remembered what Victoria had said to me that day in the Camacho conference room. Every girl wanted to be a cheerleader—in Victoria’s world, anyway. “Has it always been your dream to be a dancer?”

  “It was until I realized what it’s really all about.” She gestured at me, waving her hand up and down. “Look at me. Look at you. Who can see beyond the package? Taping up our boobs and doing a million butt crunches. We’re more than bodies, you know, but you sure couldn’t tell from the way we’re treated.”

  She was preaching to the choir. I was a Latina woman from a traditional Mexican family trying hard to compete with some tough hombres in a man’s job. “Of course we are.”

  “People can’t see beyond”—she flung her arms out—“beyond this. I thought being a dancer would be awesome. Freeing. But it’s not. It’s oppressive.”

  Hello? Had she seen the outfits we had to wear before she’d signed up? It was total objectification. Not to mention her current ensemble. “If you don’t like it, why do you do it?”

  “You’re perfect, you know,” she said, instead of answering my question. “You have perfect breasts.” She floated her hands through the air in the shape of an hourglass. “The ratio of your hips to your waist. It couldn’t be more ideal.” She ran her palms down her sides. “I don’t have that ratio, but that’s what people want. We have to strip it all away.”

  I had no idea what she was getting at so I sipped my coffee, wishing it had a splash of chocolate and some frothy milk stirred into it. “What do you mean, ‘strip it all away’?”

  She took a bolstering breath before lowering her voice to a secretive level. “Have you ever heard of Cuerpo y Alma?”

  I translated. Body and Soul. It rang a bell, but…“No.”

  “People there see inside of you.” She put her hands on the table and leaned toward me, lowering her voice even more. “It takes away the importance of the outside package. Do you understand?”

  I shook my head, trying to make sense out of what she was saying. “What’s Cuerpo y Alma?”

  She searched the parking lot behind me. “It’s where I belong,” she finally said, drawing out the last word.

  “O-kay.” I was not connecting the dots, and it wasn’t from lack of brain cells or effort. “So why not go there?”

  Wherever there was.

  She hesitated, a long, weighty pause, then finally said, “Because people need real jobs. Jennifer did. We all do. But…”

  I leaned closer, hoping we were finally getting to the point of this rendezvous.

  “I think the notes we’re all getting at the games are because of me.”

  Phew. She’d had my full attention all along, but now I was givin
g 120 percent. I opened my notebook and grabbed a pen from my purse. I wrote down Cuerpo y Alma and Selma’s full real name. Then I prompted her to go on. “What exactly do you mean when you say it’s where you belong, and why do you think the notes are because of you?”

  She flicked her eyes around, as if she were making sure we weren’t overheard. “The package doesn’t matter there because people don’t care about it.”

  Either she wasn’t making sense or I was slow on the uptake. “I don’t understand, Selma.”

  “It’s a naturist resort.” There was the low voice again. “You know, clothing optional?”

  “Oh.” ¡Dios mío! “Nudists.”

  “Naturist is more PC, but yeah, it’s basically the same.” She shook her head and whatever sadness was in her seemed to deepen. “The outside and inside can’t be separated, no matter how much I might want them to be. I can’t change who I am.”

  I tapped the tip of my pen against my notepad, a slew of questions going through my mind. Topping the pile was: Is it a coincidence that Selma and Jennifer both had ties to nudist resorts?

  “So you go to Cuerpo y Alma?”

  “As much as possible.”

  “Selma—?” I said, hesitating because I knew that I had to tread carefully.

  She raised her gaze to mine, waiting.

  “Did you ever see…” I trailed off. Even though Jennifer was gone, it felt wrong to be the one outing her as a nudist.

  A tear slipped down Selma’s cheek and she quickly brushed it away. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Her voice got small and quiet. “You were going to ask if I’d ever seen Jennifer there. Weren’t you?”